[phantomrt]

My Grand Prix's transmission died on me 300 miles from home, so I brought it into a local shop to see if they could do a diagnosis, mostly to see if I could get it home somehow. All they did was start it up, notice a whine from the transmission, noticed that it was slipping, and charged me $80 to tell me I needed a new transmission for a total cost of $2134. How bout we do some diagnosis, eh? Thats what the diagnosis fee is for, right? Yah, a $200 car and I'm going to put that much into it. They were going to charge me $1200 for a USED transmission.

The shop was very much dead at the time, and I kindly asked them to be reasonable. I was very kind and considerate that their efforts are far from free. The transmission R&R takes 6 hours times $70/hr = $420. I know that their cost at the local junk yard was no where near $1200 for a USED transmission. Estimated cost of $400 for one of those. Assuming $50 for shop supplies, $20 environmental disposal fees, $50 tax... lets see. $420 + 400 + 50 + 20 + 50 = $940. I was never going to come back for any kind of warranty claim since I was an out-of-towner. I might have actually paid that because after the cost to get the thing towed back home via U-haul dolley and a truck would have crept up on that price after what it would cost me to do it at home.

So, I left there, limping the car along. I discovered that once I could slip the transmission up to 50 mph, and get it to shift into overdrive and have torque converter lockup, I could drive indefinitely. So, I crept up onto the interestate, and drove all the way home like that with no issues. Called a local junk yard, $374 after tax for a transmission with 80k miles, $40 in misc supplies, and for $405 or so, and 1 weekend of labor later, I was back on the road. Their loss, my gain. The car is still a big POS though.